ABSTRACT COLEY, TOBY FRANKLIN. Wikis in The
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ABSTRACT COLEY, TOBY FRANKLIN. Wikis in the Teaching of Writing: Purposes for Implementation. (Under the direction of Chris M. Anson). Throughout the documented history of the teaching of writing, educators have engaged in various methods through which to guide student learning in the textual medium. In recent years, the digital age has provided a plethora of educational opportunities from long-distance learning and virtual courses, to course management systems, blogs, and wikis. The wiki has emerged as a growing technology with the potential to transform the rhetoric of the writing classroom. The present project seeks to further the research available on wikis in the teaching of writing. This study is both definitional and explorational. The questions it seeks to address include: how are wikis being used in educator’s classrooms; to what purposes are the wikis being used; in what ways are wikis being used? To answer some of these questions, various instructor survey responses were evaluated and incorporated into this thesis. The six main purposes for which wikis are being used in education that are identified in this study are 1) collaboration, 2) facilitation of work, 3) audience extension, 4) knowledge building/reflecting, 5) effective writing, and 6) multimodal literacy. After gathering data on the above purposes, this research discusses the results of the data and considers future research for integrating wiki technology into the teaching of writing. WIKIS IN THE TEACHING OF WRITING: PURPOSES FOR IMPLEMENTATION by TOBY FRANKLIN COLEY A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts ENGLISH Raleigh, North Carolina 2007 APPROVED BY: __________________________________ __________________________________ Dr. Michael P. Carter Dr. Susan Miller-Cochran __________________________________ Dr. Chris M. Anson, Chair of Advisory Committee ii Dedication This thesis is dedicated wholeheartedly to my wonderful wife, Christina Coley; without whose dedication and support this thesis would not have been possible. iii Biography Toby Franklin Coley was born in Wilson, North Carolina. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Biblical Studies with a minor in the History of Ideas from Southeastern College at Wake Forest in 2005. Toby began work on his Master of Arts degree in literature at North Carolina State University in the fall of 2005. During the course of his studies, through a fortuitous independent study in the history of modern composition under the guidance of Dr. Chris Anson, Toby realized his passion for composition and how it would complement his passion for guiding students to becoming effective citizens of their nation. This passion led Toby to focus his concentration on Composition and Rhetoric and received his Master’s degree in 2007. Toby will continue his graduate career by pursuing his PhD in Rhetoric and Writing at Bowling Green State University in Ohio in the fall of 2007. iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Chris Anson for his guidance throughout the process of this thesis. His comments have been extremely helpful and guided much of the final product. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Michael Carter and Dr. Susan Miller- Cochran for their support on this thesis and for gratefully accepting to be readers and colleagues on this project. Both Dr. Carter and Dr. Miller- Cochran have provided generous comments that have shaped this project. I would also like to extend a heartfelt acknowledgement of gratitude to all the professors in the wonderful composition community who took the time to complete my survey, and whose quotes I have judiciously used in this thesis. Thank you to the WPA-L for their wonderful comments on wikis and to the professors with whom I conducted interviews and email requests. v Table of Contents Page LIST OF FIGURES .........................................................................................................viii LIST OF TABLES...........................................................................................................ix INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1: Review of Literature.................................................................................6 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................15 2.1 Research Methodology .........................................................................15 2.2 Data Collection .....................................................................................19 2.3 Analysis.................................................................................................21 CHAPTER 3: RESULTS OF DATA...............................................................................24 3.1 Wiki Instructor Survey Results.............................................................24 3.2 Interview Data.......................................................................................34 CHAPTER 4: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ......................................................40 4.1 Collaboration.........................................................................................40 4.2 Facilitation of Work..............................................................................43 4.3 Audience Extension ..............................................................................45 4.4 Knowledge Building and Reflection.....................................................47 4.5 Effective Writing ..................................................................................49 4.6 Multimodal Literacy .............................................................................55 4.7 Future Areas of Wiki Research.............................................................58 WORKS CITED ..............................................................................................................63 APPENDICES .................................................................................................................69 Appendix A Information on Wiki Clones and Choosing a Wiki................70 Appendix B Wiki Instructor Survey and Data............................................73 Appendix C Interview with Dr. Charles Jarod............................................79 Appendix D Interview with Dr. Joseph Moore...........................................87 Appendix E Interview with Dr. Chad Cross. ..............................................92 Appendix F Sample Wiki Assignments......................................................97 Appendix G Common Wiki Components...................................................98 Appendix H Wikis Being Used in Education .............................................99 Appendix I Wikis Uses and Problems in Pedagogy ...................................101 vi List of Figures Page FIGURE 4.1: Robin Farabaugh’s ENG250 .....................................................................45 vii List of Tables Page TABLE 3.1: Reasons Instructors are Using Wikis ..........................................................25 TABLE 3.2: Part 2 Answers from WIS...........................................................................30 TABLE 3.3: Part 2 Percentages from WIS......................................................................31 TABLE 3.4: Part 3 Answers from WIS...........................................................................33 TABLE 3.5: Part 3 Percentages from WIS......................................................................33 1 Introduction - Wikis in Context: Writing in Multimodal Environments "Wikis are already making their mark in higher education and are being applied to just about any task imaginable. They are popping up like mushrooms, as wikis will, at colleges and universities around the world, sometimes in impromptu ways and more often with thoughtful intent.” — Brian Lamb In 1994 Ward Cunningham, a well known pioneer in the field of design patterns and extreme programming as well as the inventor of CRC-Cards (HyperCard) and the wiki concept, wanted to “create an environment where we [computer programmers] might link together each others’ experience to discover the pattern language of programming” (Venners, “Exploring”). From ideas that originated in his creation of HyperCard, a program from Apple for creating applications and storing information that was among the first hypermedia systems, the first wiki (WikiWikiWeb)came into existence in 1995 (Leuf 14). Wiki comes from the Hawaiian word “wiki wiki,” which means “quick,” coined by Ward Cunningham. A wiki is a collaborative Web site that allows users to modify content through a web browser. Entered text is translated from a simple mark-up language into HTML through the wiki software. A wiki can be an individual Web page that contains multiple linked wiki pages as part of an individual wiki, or it may contain several separate community wikis. Since 1994, wikis have grown in popularity in classrooms across the nation. From the university wiki at Texas A&M Corpus Christi (http://critical.tamucc.edu/wiki) to non-university related sites such as Using Wiki in Education (http://ikiw.org/), wikis 2 are making a mark in education. In the Educause Learning Initiative article, “7 Things You Should Know about Wikis,” the author expresses the growing popularity of wikis by saying that "Educators and students, as well as amateurs